Industry briefings set for military research program into cyber security for artificial intelligence (AI)
ARLINGTON, Va. – U.S. military researchers will brief industry next month on an upcoming project to assess the vulnerabilities of military artificial intelligence (AI) programs to enemy cyber attack.
Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., will conduct industry-day briefings on the SABER program from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on 12 March 2025 at the Executive Conference Center, 4075 Wilson Blvd., in Arlington, Va., and virtually via Zoom for Government.
Cyber security for AI
The DARPA SABER project seeks to build an AI research group equipped with the necessary counter-AI techniques, tools, and technical competency to assess AI-enabled battlefield systems.
Industry briefings will consist of an open session from 9 a.m. to noon, and a limited U.S. persons-only session from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Non-U.S. citizens are eligible to attend the morning open session, while the afternoon session is limited to U.S. citizens.
There is no known reported ecosystem that operationally assesses deployed military AI-enabled systems for their vulnerabilities to cyber security attack, DARPA officials warn. As a result, the so the theoretical adversarial AI attacks have not been practically demonstrated in operational settings.
The bottom line: the operational security risks of AI-enabled battlefield systems remain unknown.
AI in military systems
AI technology has reached a level of maturity sufficient to integrate the technology into U.S. military systems. AI could give battlefield advantage by helping improve the speed, quality, and accuracy of decision-making while enabling autonomy and assistive automation.
Yet AI has been shown a vulnerability to an adversary's taking control of its data input, which can lead to data poisoning, physically constrained adversarial patches for evasion, and model stealing attacks.
Companies interested in attending the in-person and virtual SABER proposers day briefings should register online at https://creative.spa.com/darpa/i2o/saber/pd/?p=registration no later than 25 Feb. 2025.
The SABER program manager is Lt. Col. Nathaniel Bastian. Email questions or concerns to DARPA at [email protected]. More information is online at https://sam.gov/opp/7b7b1852adad42a18921c07dcfc870a7/view.
John Keller | Editor-in-Chief
John Keller is the Editor-in-Chief, Military & Aerospace Electronics Magazine--provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronics and optoelectronic technologies in military, space and commercial aviation applications. John has been a member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since 1989 and chief editor since 1995.
